Madoka Magica 8 (no spoilers)

by dm00

Heart to heart talk

Sign of the apocalypse: Homura shows emotion.

(Can’t guarantee no spoilers in the comments, though, so…)

Book Girl and the double-layered mysteries

by dm00

Watch out, Yomiko, here comes Tohko Amano

I was prompted to pop these two books to the top of my reading queue after reading this review of the second book at Erica Friedman’s blog. I’m glad I did, and I can’t wait for the third volume in the series to come out in August.

Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime

Tohko Amano is a “book girl”. She lives on books — devouring them. Literally and literately. She will read a page, then tear it out and chew it slowly, relishing the flavors and describing them in terms that would make a gourmet blush. The narrator of this novel teases her for being a “book-eating goblin”, but she is a charming one.

To feed her habit, she has ensnared Konoha Inoue, a first-year student as the only other member of her book-club. Every day after school she challenges him to write an improvisational story on a theme of her choosing, which she will then consume. To feed her taste for romantic adventure, she has installed a mailbox on the school-yard, with the note that “describe them for us, and the Book Club will solve your romantic problems”. Their first customer is a clumsy duckling of a first-year student who has a crush on a member of the archery club.

After hearing her story, Tohko tells her that the club (meaning the long-suffering Konoha) will provide her with love-letters that she can copy and send to her crush. The price: she is to write a report on how things go.

Konoha writes the letters, but soon grows curious. He asks a classmate, also in the archery club, about the boy the girl has a crush on, and finds that there is no one like that in the archery club. When he confronts the girl, she insists that the boy exists.

On further investigation, Tohko and Inoue discover that the boy committed suicide ten years earlier.

What follows is a mystery that resonates with ghosts in Inoue’s own past, that culminates in a harrowing scene dangling from a rooftop.

For Inoue does have ghosts, and they serve to make him a much more interesting narrator than seems common in light novels. The characterizations are well-done and believable (a far cry from the wordy affectless artificiality of Nisio Isin’s Zaregoto books, despite Tohko’s supernatural nature). Inoue can be almost as snarky as Haruhi Suzumiya’s Kyon, but with Tohko a far more charming character than Haruhi, I think the books may wear better with succeeding volumes.

Tohko is a delightful nerd, a book otaku.

The translation is superb — indeed, I ceased to be aware that I was reading a translation.  Yen Press recommends the books for fifteen and up, probably because of the discussion of teenage suicide, but I don’t think it’s inappropriate for anyone over 12.

Yumekui Merry 7

by dm00

I find myself wondering why I am watching this show (good heavens, a beach episode). But then they do something like this:

Look at the reflections on his face

….and this:

The reflections on the faucet, yes, but if this were animated, you'd see the water flowing

….and this:

Oh, God, that background

….and at the other end of the episode….

….and I understand.

Mind you, Sunset Merry was preceded by the work of their C-team animators who animated the surf washing around (more like through) the feet of Merry and Yumeji, and it looked terrible. But someone was hard at work on beautiful imagery.

Madoka Magica 7 (no spoilers)

by dm00

I've been expecting this

Big pluses for this episode:

• Shinbo stained glass!
• Homura has more than three lines of dialogue!
• Mensch Kyouko!

Minuses:

• No MadokaMom (well, okay, maybe one spoiler)

Last Exile Tuesdays

by dm00

Steampunk

Last month a confluence of events inspired a bunch of us over at a place where we like to hang out to watch Last Exile again, as a group. It’s a bit of an odd decision — it’s not like it is an anniversary or anything, it just seemed to be in the air. Coincidentally, we decided to do this just a few days before Gonzo announced its plans for a sequel (which was interesting, but most of us are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward that). One episode a week, just as though it were airing for the first time. We arbitrarily settled on Tuesday as the day.

Boy, that decision to watch just one episode a week is a difficult resolve to maintain. When the series doesn’t end on a cliff-hanger, it ends with the promise that more will be revealed next episode. When that feather falls out of the whiteness, and the chorus starts the first notes of the ending music, I would (and still do) always catch my breath, still hungry for more.

The female lead, Lavie Head, is one of Chiwa Saito’s first major roles. She’s wonderfully mercurial and transparent — the anti-Senjougahara, the anti-Homura: everything is there written on her face, spelled out in the tone of her voice (it was a type that served her well in R.O.D. the TV and Pani Poni Dash). She is wonderful.

Her companion Claus, is idealistic, responsible, but still very clearly a kid, aware that he’s maybe in over his head but determined to see it through, to maintain the pride of the names Valca and Head.

One surprise is 14-year-old Kana Hanazawa’s few moments on the screen as Mad-thane’s daughter.

It has the wonderful Range Murata designs — half of them 30s concoctions of art deco, bakelite, and gunmetal, half of them gleaming futuristic Guild settings, and a fantastic soundtrack.

Sure, the series falls apart a bit toward the end (though it’s much better than most Gonzo shows in that respect) but it was a fantastic watch, and it is proving to be a fantastic rewatch.

We’re up to episode three. The world this takes place in is still a puzzle, with its Guild-refereed chivalric air-battles, its water-shortages, and its air-pirate captain lacking only a scar, a Skull-and-Crossbones painted on the prow of his ship, and a glass of wine in his hand (the linguistic leap from Arcadia to Silvana is short indeed).

Funimation is streaming it here if you don’t have a copy of this classic of your own.

Show Some Love For Kyubey

By TheBigN (Yarr spoilers yarr)

So I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Puella Magi Madoka Magica so far.  As others who watch know, it’s been a little crazy ride so far, and it casts some nice new looks at the general concept of a “magical girl”, or at least brings up viewpoints that probably haven’t been really stressed in a while. I like the final product of a sort of “dream team” in my eyes (Shinbou, Kajiura and Ume) as it’s been so far. And I very much enjoy how the show just keeps us guessing as to what happens next, with the fact that I don’t mind at all if I’m completely wrong about what I think some of the main concepts are of the show (granted, I doubt it’s productive to do that in the first place).

Of course, with a show with this much notoriety, there’s a lot of comments that are all over the place in terms of praises and complaints about how things are. Some of them come off to me as asinine, like “Madoka should stop being so emo (she’s be pretty damn crazy if she was able to shake off traumatic stuff days after like it was nothing)”, and others are entirely justified, like animosity towards that poker-faced mascot, Kyubey (or Kyuubee, or QB, whatever floats your boat), based on his actions with our “magical girls”. At the same time though, Kyubey’s induces much more laughter than hate from my mind, and he’s (she’s? it’s?) definitely one of my favorite characters in the show. It’s hard not to admire how he tries so hard to get his contracts down.

I think the lesson here is not to trust someone with a face like that to give you a fair deal. By 塩犬 at http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=16111219

What to do while waiting for Madoka Magica 7

by dm00

The original Magical Girl trapped on the boundaries of a dark world

Mami and Homura have both told Madoka that the life of a mahou shoujo is a lonely one.  If Madoka had known about Vampire Princess Miyu she wouldn’t have needed to be told.

And if Kyuubei were to ever laugh, it would probably sound like the last moments of the final Vampire Princess Miyu OVA.

DMAB is Four Years Old. Hey.

By TheBigN

It’s helped that articles like this one pop up every now and then that both help me take stock of how long DMAB has gone (and is still going) as a blog, and provide some sort of subjective measure of our influence (which isn’t much \o). That being said, this blog wasn’t created to be inspiring, and it’s a nice surprise to see that it’s still going strong with the writings of dm00, Link, nomadotto (he’s still alive, don’t you know), and I continually bringing things out of the woodwork. And that definitely includes the extra hand or two that jumps in, to my eternal gratitude, to keep things running, if not interesting. I only hope that it can continue for years to come, and it helps that they still keep making anime at that.

As always, I hope that whoever normally reads, subscribes, comments, lurks, or just so happens to find this blog randomly searching for something like, say, “Hideyoshi Kinoshita”, has gotten something positive from it (:P). If it’s something that somehow makes you smile, even better, and it’s totally awesome if the blog makes you think or inspires you to do something that you enjoy.  Goodness knows that if I didn’t enjoy putting my words out onto this little tiny area of the Internet, regardless of how many people see them or not, I wouldn’t still be doing this. Especially considering how my life is only going to get more consumed by factors outside of anime and manga. And I believe that everyone else on DMAB has sentiments along those lines.

I never feel like I express myself well in these types of posts when I write them given their relative importance, but I think saying thank you for reading Drastic My Anime Blog is best as always. And please keep stopping by if you have the time to do so.  :)

 

Like a breath of fresh air. By 六羽田共. Website at http://heart.sabax.jp/.